Misapplied Phlebotinum - Television Tropes & Idioms

The digital world from Digimon was created from computer programming and could subvert any laws of reality, a programmer could solve any problem plaguing humanity. In particular, humans who go there do not have to eat, breathe, excrete waste, or age if they don't want to. Said programmers primarily use their digi-Reality Warper abilities to... create inter-world portals and mess around with Mons.
The way Miaka from Fushigi Yuugi used up her three wishes. Seriously, for how long the series went on, you would think the writer could have thought of better requests...
Played straight then averted with the kagebunshin (shadow clones) of Naruto. Perfect duplicates of the jutsu's user whose memories are re-integrated back into the user when the clone is dispelled/destroyed. Up until Kakashi pointed out that they could be used for espionage and training, Naruto only used them to attack opponents mundanely. Fortunately, he now has used them to accomplish the world's fastest creation and mastering of a brand-new technique, the Rasen shuriken, which is also the first ever technique to combine perfected shape manipulation with nature manipulation.
Acknowleged in The Five Star Stories. The Humongous Mecha are shown to be quite impractical & tempermental & it's recognized that the whiz-bang technology that goes into creating them could be put to better use. What stops them is a combination of aristocratic tradition & the fact that if that technology were used for more efficient weapons it could result in the destruction of entire planets. Not a wise thing to do, considering there are only five or six habitable planets in their known universe.
Somewhat averted in Cannon God Exaxxion. They go into a considerable amount of detail about all the interesting things you can do with Artificial Gravity tech & how it dramatically changes the face of modern industry & combat. The limited way Nano Machines are used in the series smacks of this trope, but they at least bother to handwave it by citing the technology's astronomical cost.

Green Lanterns - You have the ultimate weapon. It's powers limited only by your imagination. Big-ass hammer is NOT a good application of your powers.
Basically, every superhero. Name one superhero who couldn't somehow make a fortune using his or her abilities for something other than beating up another superhuman.
- DC Comics has (had?) the Kapitalist Kouriers, a set of Russian superspeedsters who indeed used their powers for a courier business. All over the world. However: characters who do that instead of beating up on The Bad Guy of the Week don't get played in RPGs and don't get their own comic titles. So it's sorta self-defeating.
- An issue of Heroes For Hire (which is Exactly What It Says On The Tin, so at least these guys are getting paid for their work) has one of the "heroes" in a government warehouse where various captured supervillain equipment is stored. Upon seeing one piece of equipment, he notes the idiocy of inventing a gun that turns stuff into gold, then using it to rob banks. It takes him very little time to realize that he ought to steal the gun himself and use it in more intelligent ways. Unfortunately, it's broken shortly afterward in a super-brawl. He presumably was unaware of the fact that any object transmuted by the alchemy gun turns into dust after exposure to heat or after a certain amount of time. Mining and construction companies would pay a fortune for a device that could easily reduce solid material into dust regardless of what it became in the interim!
- A recent issue of Flash had him do just this. He was hired by an antique film and memorabilia collector. He hired the Flash to watch all of his movies and examine all of his antiques and catalog them. Obviously made for the plot, but ingenious none the less.
- Cut Lex Luthor A Check. The Ultimates do just that.
  - Pre Crisis Mad Scientist Lex Luthor could become every bit as wealthy as Reed Richards if he marketed his tech legally, but he has too much of an ubermensch complex to even want to make a living within society's infrastructure, viewing mundane Last Man civilization itself with contempt. John Byrne's Post Crisis Luthor is rich, but not a scientist, and just got rich by being a mundane ruthless S.O.B. Modern Luthor combines the two versions to finally Cut Lex Luthor A Check and establish his scientific genius as the source of his colossal wealth.
- Lampshaded in the first issue of the Mark Shaw incarnation of Manhunter. Over a series of panels of Dr. Alchemy using this powers to perform a robbery, Manhunter points out that he could probably make more money a dozen different ways using a stone that would allow him to transform an object into something else, even if it was temporary.
- Subverted by the GURPS supplement SuperTemps, which was filled with supers who used their powers for things like sanitation and garbage disposal, medicine, being a courier, or being a security expert.
- GURPS International Super Teams incorporated SuperTemps into its setting, and expanded upon it. And the I.S.T. chapter of GURPS Y2K had detailed passages on supers using their powers for construction and other mundane occupations. And not-so-mundane UN-sponsored occupations, like weather control (to divert destructive hurricanes, alleviate drought, and so forth) and famine relief ("you can make plants grow? come with me!").
- Captain Hammer in Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is mentioned by Dr. Horrible as being "corporate"; presumably he takes sponsorships. Given the character in question (an incredibly self-absorbed jackass who takes special pleasure in beating up geeks and seducing clueless women, getting away with it all because he's labeled a "hero"), it wouldn't exactly be surprising. Given his chest insignia, it wouldn't be terribly surprising if he was funded by Sears.
- Almost subverted in DC's critically-acclaimed Starman comic of the mid-to-late-1990s. Our Hero, Jack Knight, agrees to take on his father's mantle as Starman, if his father will in turn take the amazing Cosmic Rod technology that he's used for self-indulgent heroics for half a century, and adapt it to civilian use: clean power, antigravity, force fields, and more. In the final issue, Ted makes good on the promise, and hands Jack a thick sheaf of documents detailing exactly that, just before his Crowning Moment Of Awesome. It's almost subverted because, years after the end of the series, no trace of the "spin-off" technology has been seen.
- Seriously subverted in Watchmen.
  - Dr. Manhattan's unique physiology and abilities are used to derive a massive amount of technologies, including electric cars. Fancy.
  - At the time of the story, Ozymandias is running a mega-conglomerate, selling, among many other items, perfume and action figures based on himself and his colleagues.
  - The original Silk Spectre also made a living as a model. She went on to marry her agent.
- To be fair, most heroes fight supervillains not to make a good living, but because they want to save people from being killed by supervillains. And because if nobody fought the supervillains, they wouldn't have an intact society left to make a good living in. Not that Spidey shouldn't be given a good hard smack for not, oh, patenting the gorram web fluid and making a hojillion bucks selling tangleguns to the police, or something.
- He actually tried to profit off his web fluid in one of the early comics, but then they discovered the whole "it degrades in one hour like a real spider's" thing and the chemical firm turned him down.
  - Which is a bit stupid, because it would still be incredibly useful in construction, law enforcement, and stunt-work. Why would you want a tanglegun to last more than an hour?
  - Of course, Spidey getting screwed over by the universe in some way is definitely not unheard of.
  - Real spider webs do not degrade in an hour.
  - They never said the webs degrade in a couple of hours because real spider webs do the same thing. Rather, Spider-man said that he didn't want the bad guys to be tied up like that permanently, I mean the cops do have to take them to prison after all. In the comic Spidey also says that he could alter some of his webbing to make it permanent, but it would take a lot of time and money which Spidey just didn't have to spend.
  - He's also tried patenting or selling his webfluid, but realized that he couldn't cash a check as Spider-Man. He'd have to make his identity public in order to benefit from the webbing, and that's too dangerous.
  - Plus the number of super villans that don't know Spiderman's seceret identity is practically zero.
- Deadpool (at various times, Cable and the Six Pack also qualify) use their abilities for mercenary work, drawing a paycheck for using their powers and skills to hurt and kill people. It may not be particularly nice money, but hey, it's a living.
Phil Seleski (aka Solar) from Valiant Comics universe has the power to manipulate matter and energy any way he wants. Most of the time, he uses them to stop criminals that, even if powerful, were much weaker then him. Justified because first time he tried to use his powers to the fullest, the entire universe collapsed into a black hole, forcing him to re-create it as the Valiant Universe (a combination of the real world and stories from his favorite comic books).
Subverted in the Marvel Universe in that it's implied that most of the big brains (Reed Richards, Hank Pym, Tony Stark) do make money patenting and licensing their creations. (It's canon that most of the Fantastic Four's funding comes from Reed's various patents, most notably unstable molecules).
Also a Marvel subversion: Simon "Wonder Man" Williams made his money as an actor before he gained super powers. Afterwards he made even more in action movies, performing the kinds of stunts most crash test dummies wouldn't survive.
- Which doesn't help in that Simon dislikes showing his rear for the camera.
  - Which is even funnier, considering he wears tights that practically show everything anyway.
Alan Moore's Tom Strong. His recurring enemy has 'liquid sun' as his main weapon (being an evil genius also helps). Much misery results. An alternate universe Tom convinces said bad guy to sell his Phlebotinum as an energy source. Much happiness results. Until it all goes to pot.
The (current) Rainmaker program in PS238 is all about averting this, but it's been played straight (and lampshaded) since the days of Mr. Extraordinary that the best thing many living perpetual energy devices, Technopaths, and Green Lantern Ring users do is punch bad guys, build robots to punch bad guys, and punch bad guys with force-field hammers.
Golden Age Superman villain Funnyface was a disgruntled cartoonist who invented a machine to bring Newspaper Comics characters to life. He used it to rob banks. When he reappears in an issue of All Star Squadron, many years later, the heroes point out to him what a preposterous waste of the technology this is, and he reacts with astonishment, clearly not having thought about it.

The Prestige's matter duplicator. You can duplicate anything, even living beings. Best use in story: a magic trick. Better idea: Have anything you want. This is somewhat justified by the fact that the main character is too crazy and vengeance-focused to use it for anything but his convoluted magic trick plot. The inventor, Tesla, on the other hand, really doesn't have an excuse, besides being, well, you know — Tesla.
- It's heavily implied that Tesla didn't realize that it was a matter duplicator, due to the fact that the duplicate (or maybe the original?) is also teleported some distance away. So, you're left with a machine that has some crazy special effects and then stops working with your supposed teleportee still standing there.
- He didn't realize...until Angier found the hat copies and went directly to tell him what it did. Too bad for Tesla that he didn't realize that he could have used it to solve all his funding problems.
In the various Blade movies, Blade is the only (Half) vampire with the ability to go about in the daylight. Best use in movie: None, he just moves around and talks to humans during the day. Better use: Use it to attack other vampires in their homes or offices during the day when they can't run away. In the comics and The Series, he does actually spend much of his time trying to track down the daytime hiding places of vamps. Not always an easy task, since the vamps know that's when they're vulnerable, so they tend to make hiding well a priority.
- Blade seems to act like a Blood Knight or loose interpretation of a samurai in the movies, so maybe he doesn't want an easy or "dishonorable" fight or something.
In The Matrix Reloaded, Neo almost never uses the full extent of his powers. Example: Neo stops a ton of machine gun bullets from a half dozen mooks, lets them fall to the floor, and then fights them in a big wire fight. Better idea: Send the bullets back at full speed, shredding the mooks without any real effort at all.
Charlie And The Chocolate Factory is full of this, but it's lampshaded by Mike Teevee being outraged that Willy Wonka only wants to use his shrinking/teleportation ray for something as "pointless" as candy, when he could be using it on more interesting things, like breakfast cereal and people.
- Shortly thereafter, he learns the teleporter's limitations the hard way.
Averted in Bill And Teds Excellent Adventure, when the title characters have a Genius Ditz moment and figure out how to use Time Travel to its full potential. Namely, they use it to get themselves out of bad situations by agreeing to have their future selves (once the crisis is over) go back in time to arrange situations and manipulate objects to their present selves' advantage during the crisis. (Although they have to take care and remember all of the things that their future selves have done so that when THEY become the future selves, they'll know what things to change when they go back to the time of the crisis.)
- In most Time Travel stories, the technology to move through time seems woefully underused —with characters that have time machines (that have no constraints limiting when and where they can travel) frequently rushing against deadlines, forgetting that they have all the time in the world to do what they want (although Bill & Ted at least justifies that with San Dimas Time).
  - Star Trek Voyager wonderfully trashes that idea in "Timeless" where the doctor says:
  The Doctor: I'm no time travel expert, but can't we just call Voyager again? The past isn't going anywhere.
  - Turned around in DC Comics One Million. It takes the all-too human Huntress to realize they have centuries upon centuries to get the various pieces into place to rescue the future and stabilize their own time. Having some immortals in your camp helps.
  - Marty McFly realizes this.
  Marty:I've got all the time in the world, I'm in a time machine!
  - Too bad he only gives himself ten extra minutes.
Star Wars: The battle droids' artificial intelligence. We've been trying for decades to create artificial intelligence so that robots can adapt quickly to changing situations. In Star Wars, artificial intelligence is used to give robots human-like reaction times and indecisiveness, turning a killer robot army into comic relief.
- Later, more advanced models are actually worse for this. In Episode One they had verbal orders and could be confused, by Three they had little chats while they worked.
- Lampshaded in the novelization: A clone trooper, pretending to be dead for the benefit of a few battle droids, is able to communicate with his squad and recieve orders, since his helmet is designed to work on voice commands and chin switches, so it can be used even when immobilized. He muses that while clones are becoming more like droids, droids are being made more human (such as being required to speak aloud when using their communicators).
Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs has an inventor who typifies this trope. One could think up a thousand uses for a bulletproof, waterproof, fireproof, spray on coating other than "spray on shoes." And consider that his "food creation machine" converts ordinary H2O into complex organic food molecules (which means it could convert them into darn near any other material, organic or inorganic)—- and apparently runs off the residual energy left over from the process. A combination replicator and fusion generator...
Star Trek in general has many instances of this trope; the 2009 movie adds a new one: with the help of future knowledge from Old Spock, Scotty quickly modifies a transporter to beam himself and Kirk onto the Enterprise — which has been travelling away from them for hours, at the kind of speed that let it get from Earth to Vulcan in minutes. Now, if you can build a transporter that sends you across vast interstellar distances in an instant... why do you need starships? (Of course, the answer is — to prevent the Star Trek franchise from turning into a funky version of the Stargate Verse...)

None of the characters in the series Animorphs ever considered that the morphing technology handed to them in the very first book, if given to the series big bad, might solve the species-wide problem that drove them to Alien Invasion in the first place? Even after they offered it to the Extreme Omnivore Taxxons in a bid to get them to switch sides? When you consider that they're constantly up against Vissor Three, though, no wonder it took them ages to think of it.
- There's no guarantee the Yeerks would do a massive Heel Face Turn and leave Earth alone. Besides, the kids thought that the Yeerks were Always Chaotic Evil, and weren't very interested in cutting deals.
  - And the little fact that the morphing technology was invented after the declaration of the law of Seerow's kindness. Andalite law would forbid giving the morphing technology to Yeerks, because while most of them would probably Mode Lock into some better form than a sentient brain slug, there would probably be a few crazier Yeerks *cough*Visser Three*cough* that would use it for less peaceful purposes. Especially since giving the Yeerks technology was what started the war (and the law) in the first place.
- The morphing technology doesn't just duplicate the body of what you're morphing into, it also duplicates the mind. There's no fundamental difference between a Yeerk controlling a human it's physically inside of and one controlling a human it's morphed into.
  - It only reproduces instincts, as made clear by the occasions when humans or other sapients are morphed.
The Alfred Bester short story Star Light, Star Bright is about the pursuit of a cabal of supergenius children who have developed fantastic technology in order to deal with kid-type issues (e.g. producing sprouts that are strawberry-flavor on the inside).
- The point being that, in a way reminiscent of idiot-savants, while they are capable of advanced theoretical, mathematical and biological leaps, they're still kids and think like kids. Ask a kid what they would do if given some random power/technology. Most of the time it will be precisely something of that order. Mathematics only require a knowledge of the basic rules and their extrapolation. Sociopolitical thinking (which includes the application of theoretical research) is based less on intellect and more on experience.
A number of stories by Henry Kuttner about a down on his luck (mostly due to constant drinking) man who becomes a Bunny Ears Lawyer genius inventor when drunk but can't remember when he sobers up. Since it is generally played for laughs and his drunk self is a Cloudcuckoolander, that kind of explains it.
- In the short story The Proud Robot he invented an unbelievably sophisticated singing robot with a highly intelligent (and vain) AI. The inventor couldn't get the robot to do anything he wanted because he forgot why he built it in the first place (he was drunk). In the climax, he remembers that he built it because he had trouble opening a can of beer. He swore to build a bigger and better can opener; said robot is able to open beer cans with absolutely no fizz or a single drop of spilled beer. The ending has the inventor becoming depressed because beer cans are being phased out in favor of plastic bulbs, meaning his "can opener" robot will be "useless".
In Twilight, the Cullens are blessed with eternal life and a seemingly infinite amount of money. You'd think they'd devote their lives to something interesting, if not something charitable since they are described as basically Jesus. The best thing they could come up with is going to high school for decades and not even making good friends every once in a while.
- Don't forget the perfect looks, absolute expertise in all physical combat, inability to feel cold/heat/pain, and several degrees apiece. About the only thing that can be used as an excuse is that the Volturi might kill them for using too much of their awesome stuff, but then that doesn't stop them from buying crazy-expensive cars and jet-setting around the world for years at a time. You have to think the world governments already know about them.
Refreshingly, completely averted in Honorverse, at least about the Artificial Gravity: it was clearly shown to be the technology that makes their world exist. It enables interstellar trade, as countergrav shuttles makes orbital delivery economical, and truly humongous (they weigh in megatonnes) merchant boats keep shipping prices low enough that a ton of beef brought from hundred light years away could still cost same or even cheaper than the ton of a local beef. It also revolutionized architecture (10-km high residential towers anyone?), other areas of transport, and almost all their military technology, from the grav lenses in their Frickin Laser Beams to the Deflector Shields or the engines of all those missiles are different applications of the same basic countergrav.
In Michael Crichton's Timeline there is an immensly powerful quantum computer capable of recording the exact quantum state of every particle in human body, and then sending the data to another universe where it can somehow be recreated into a perfect copy of the person (though the original is technically speaking destroyed - the protagonists are much less disturbed by this than you'd think). It is used to study history by sending people and recorders to universes identical to our own except their position in time, when they could use it among other things for consulting dead people with important opinions, for duplicating rare and useful materials, for immortality, or for bringing just about any technology that's ever going to be invented in any possible future to the present you morons!
- They were originally going to use it for teleportation, the time travel aspect was discovered by accident.
- Two Words: Transcription errors.
Aversion: James P. Hogan's novel The Genesis Machine takes the Faster Than Light Travel / Weapon Of Mass Destruction misapplication mentioned above and flips it on its head. The protagonists figure out a way to transmit energy through "hi-space" to a location of their choosing, no receiver required; they weaponize it and sell it to the military. Only at the very end of the novel does it occur to one of them that with slight modifications, matter could be transmitted as well.

Star Trek has a serious problem in general with Misapplied Phlebotinum but what is easily it's most egregious case is the one nobody ever seems to call it out on, the replicator. The replicator is a machine that can make absolutely anything but dilithium crystals just so long as you plug it into a power source. Also they have more than enough power to use replicators constantly and frivolously. Frankly you'd think that sort of mastery over matter and energy and the ability to turn one into the other so effortlessly would change day to day life a hell of alot more than it seems to.
- DS9 claims that their tech has made major civilization centers into utopias. Conveniently, we never actually see this.
  - Star Trek actually did do the research on this one (albeit with some glaring exceptions): the Federation as depicted is a near-perfect example of a post-scarcity economy. Federation citizens don't need to work for a living because the replicators make everything you need for free, so everybody just does whatever they feel like doing. The shows concentrate on the idealists who are devoted to exploration and diplomacy because that makes for better television.
  - Still an example of Did Not Do The Research in economics: even if you have limitless energy and matter, you still need someone to program said replicators to create new products, or at least to create the prototype product for the replicator to duplicate. Scarcity would still exist— in the form of intellectual property.
  - Not necessarily. With billions and billions of people who have no job, surely some of them would create new replicator prototypes out of sheer boredom. If their needs are already being met, why would they care to patent their inventions?
- Another case is the holodeck, if such a thing exists you have to wonder why more people haven't taken to just living inside of one for good. You also have to wonder why it wasn't until DS9 that anyone on the show so much as suggested/suspected it could be used for living out sexual fantasies.
  - Presumably they don't concentrate on the people who live lives of leisure in the holodeck because that would be boring. Recurring character Reginald Barclay's ongoing struggle with "holo-addiction" points out why you don't want that sort of thing going on when you're supposed to be busy exploring the galaxy and making friends with aliens.
Subverted in Supernatural. When a character is discovered to have mind control abilities, he is asked why he is only using it to live a lower middle class life and to obtain some weed and a couple cool things like a rare car. He replies by claiming that he has everything he would ever want.
Speaking of mentalistic powers, Buffy Summers acquired the ability to read minds. Giles suggested using it for gathering intelligence against her enemies... but Buffy's response was "Way better than that," and she used it to investigate the petty personal questions of how people think about her. Of course, like most magic in Sunnydale, it goes horribly wrong.
Sylar's power of "studying something and figuring out exactly how it works" in Heroes. In-story use: fixing watches, stealing supernatural powers. Better use: churning out Nobel Prizes. In anything. Studying just the human body opens up fields like medicine (cure diseases, extend lifespans), neurology/psychology (figure out how the non-superpower parts of the brain work—consciousness anyone?), and genetics (genotype interaction). Of course, this may result from the fact that Sylar is insane.
- Furthermore, the second episode established that Sylar was incredibly well-read; his apartment was filled with nothing but books on a wide array of topics (sorta like an eerily tidy version of Yomiko Readman's pad), suggesting that Sylar had spent the vast majority of his life absorbing information about pretty much everything.
- The writers seem to have caught on that Sylar's power is good for more than stealing brains. In Season 3, Peter takes Sylar's power in order to understand the show's plot. Unfortunately, it also comes with an uncontrollable craving for brains.
- Claire's blood. Could easily prevent and reverse any character death in the series. Could even end death as we know it.
In New Amsterdam, in the 1600s, a Native American tribe has a spell that makes people immortal. In-story use: reward some random white guy who saved the life of one of the tribe's women. Better use: make all of the tribe's warriors immortal, then easily defeat the white guys that are taking their land.
- Well, considering that we have absolutely no idea how the whole immortality thing works, its entirely possible that it only worked on people in John's situation (saved a woman/saved a woman from his own comrades/saved a stranger from his own comrades and then was stabbed...). We have no idea how specific the requirements are.
In The Flash, Max Mercury was revealed to be a white scout who had been given speed powers by a dying shaman...except his were to prevent a massacre.
In Stargate SG-1, we were told that wormholes only function one way and that anything entering the wrong side is instantly destroyed. So even though the Stargate program didn't bring back interesting technology all the time, one has to wonder why nobody ever pitched the idea of having someone dial in off world and solving all the world's garbage and nuclear waste problems by dumping them into oblivion.
- Star Trek Voyager DID do that with an alien race that discovered a wormhole to a seemingly empty bit of space. Unfortunately it wasn't completely empty.
  - Similarly, a TNG novel focused on a planet which was being massively polluted from seemingly nowhere because its alternate universe counterpart had stumbled upon a device that made things vanish.
  - Perhaps even more notably, the alternate universe counterpart planet was also falling apart, as the chemicals in the tossed garbage were often important. Of course, this leads to a different problem, and there were a lot of other uses that were never explored.
- The Asgard had a sudden attack of Genre Savvy about this and only gave humans teleporters that were run by their own people. Until the humans found Atlantis and its storehouse of Lost Technology, after which (no causative relation implied) the Asgard just threw their hands up, committed suicide as an entire culture, and handed over all of their knowledge to the Tau'ri. With a talking manual Thor thrown in for free. Of course, the vote to hand over everything to the humans was less than unanimous, but after the whole lot of you offed yourselves...
- Stargate SG 1 and Stargate Atlantis actually do tend use phlebotinium intelligently. Upon encountering the Wraith, who had never seen Asgard beaming technology, they just started teleporting atomic bombs onto Wraith vessels, which did considerable damage before the Wraith figured out how to jam it.
- Railguns. The main advantage of a rail gun is the "omph" and the possible dakka. It's described as having a firing rate of 500 rounds per minute. This isn't bad for a heavy weapon but they're using it to try and shoot down air craft. Current rapid fire weapons have a firing rate in the 4000+ rounds per minute. Is a gatling railgun really too much? If it is, just grab a CIWS.
  - Complete nonsense. Spraying bullets is something you do because you lack accuracy which is an increasingly secondary problem today in the era of super fast computers and ever improving sensors. Rapid fire is also useless if you’re firing shells too small to rapidly defeat the intended target. Indeed as far back as WWII the trend was away from rapid fire cannons onto heavier radar directed mounts that could actually kill stop approaching aircraft before they could hit the ship 12.7mm mounts were replaced by 20s, which were then replaced by 40mm, which were finally replaced by 76mm weapons each with a progressively worse rate of fire, but progressively more range, power, and accuracy. The famous Phalanx mount is actually in rather steep decline as it's not installed on newer ships and it's been removed from some older models, new ships will be replacing it with either missiles or a far heavier and more effective 57mm mount that only fires about 200'ish rounds per minute.
Despite possessing an incredibly versatile technology that could be used for any number of things, the Dollhouse applies their phlebotinum in about the most frivolous (and morally dubious) manner conceivable. There have been a couple of hints at some sort of vague "higher purpose," so this may be addressed in future seasons if now the show is renewed.
- Epitaph One explores the inevitable misuses and outcome of the technology. It's a terrific episode.
Weird Science (series).
Student: So how come you're not the richest man in the world living on an island with Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell?
Wyatt Donnelly: Uh... we never really wished for that.
Student: Oh, so what did you wish for?
Wyatt Donnelly: I wished to be president of the chess club once. It didn't work out.

Most magicians in Unknown Armies behave this way, one major reason why some of the most powerful canon NPCs are almost completely mundane. The rulebooks frequently mention adepts using their earth-shattering powers and ancient mystic rituals to beat up ex-boyfriends or acquire Star Trek paraphernalia. Since step one to being an adept is to become cripplingly obsessed and insane...
In Dungeons And Dragons clerics can make water materialize out of thin air and purify huge amounts of existing water. Rather than, you know, revolutionizing agriculture and sea travel, they primarily use this ability to reduce the amount of canteens parties of adventurers have to lug around.
- It's a matter of quantity. This requires having decent-level priest on a boat or whole squad on a big ship. While relevant items (Decanter of Endless Water, Urn of Water Purification from Realmspace) are much better, they are too expensive for mass use. But high-magic settings may have full set of plane-gating plumbing. Netheril did.
- Exception: The Tippyverse runs on magic, using tricks such as infinite use "traps" of Create Food And Water to Create Infinite Food and Water.
Planeswalkers can summon creatures, artifacts, and various flashy effects. The best use they can come up with is to beat the shit out of each other.
- Alternatively, that may simply be the only use we ever see because Magic specifically is the game about them beating the shit out of each other. That planeswalker with the army of treefolk and carnivorous fungi might just be using his magic to help grow the crops of thousands in his downtime and have one of the most amazing gardens in the multiverse, but it's not like the cards bother to tell us much about these things...

Portal: Aperture Science, a military company that is contractually obligated to create shower curtains for the Army, patented their portal gun technology as "man-sized ad-hoc quantum tunnel through physical space with possible applications as a shower curtain." Then again, what better shower curtain would there be than a solid tile wall on all four sides?
- Subverted in that the guy that ordered the creation of the gun for that purpose was completely insane.
  - Also, this claim only shows up in a computer file on the Aperture Science website... and that website is hosted by none other than GLaDOS. Who is functioning at less than full capacity.
Steambot Chronicles: The Killer Elephants have a large organization with extensive industrial production, able to mass-produce the mecha they use, and even a giant mecha. What do they do with all these resources? They rob passing travelers.
The Weavers in Loom can manipulate the fabric of time and space. They mostly use this power for...spinning and dying clothing.
Two main exclusions to the FTL system are seen in Elite: jump-drive with inherent "somewhere in star system" level of precision and hypervelocity drive which is blocked utterly around anything with a mass of escape pod, let alone ship.
Naoya from Devil Survivor creates both a demon summoning program and a harmonizer that lessens blows to the user and increases those from the user. While the demon summoning program is rightfully considered a big deal in universe, the harmonizer is not, despite allowing its user to shrug off gun wounds.
- Considering the circumstances, however, people may simply be assuming the two functions are connected, and with the problems the former is causing... On a related note, Atsuro comes to think that the demons themselves are Misapplied Phlebotinum, and wants to take the summoner's control over them even further.
The Black Spider ninjas' motivation for trying to steal the Dark Dragon Blade in Ninja Gaiden? Their leader wanted to grind it up to make tea. Granted, he believed drinking tea made from dragon bones (which the Dark Dragon Blade was forged from) would empower him...but still, tea?
PROXY, the cheerfully homicidal (to Galen at least) Robot Buddy in The Force Unleashed. Vader created a droid that could, with the proper modules, copy the techniques and appearance of any Jedi, somehow produces lightsabers from nowhere, and can even replicate Force abilities with repulsor technology. And Vader uses it as a communications device and as a Training From Hell tool. As opposed to mass producing a droid Jedi Super Soldier army.
Pokemon both follows and averts this trope. The Verse is filled with these insanely powerful creatures, who mostly serve as combatants between kids with remote controls. They have also, however, been show to do more practical things.
- For example right at the begining of one game, some Machoke are moving boxes into your house. They are also used in construction. Milktank are used for dairy production, grass types in perfume manufacturing, and electric types are used in power plants.
Mega Man is a possible aversion. Dr. Light never seems to be hurting for money. One can assume he's making royalties off his robot designs.
- Mega Man is an inversion. Dr. Light originally designed the Robot Masters for practical purposes. It wasn't until Dr. Wiley revealed himself to be evil that they were reprogrammed for combat.
In the setting of Borderlands the technology exists to digitally decode DNA and to deconstruct solid matter into a format for digital storage and reverse the process without limit. Use in-game? Justifying the game's respawn mechanic and why players can carry 20 rifle-sized weapons and none of them show. Better use? Clone Legions armed with Conversion-Bombs.

Fracture: As pointed out in this Penny Arcade strip: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/9/19/. And when you start to think about how the terrain deformation might work and other applications for its principles, it becomes even sillier.
All the technology Tony invents in Real Life Comics is used by Greg for disturbingly mundane purposes. This pretty much tells you all you need to know. This is deliberate, and played for comedy, though.
Mad inventor Riff (well, he's more of a "Meh" inventor) in Sluggy Freelance has ended up playing this trope for laughs by using such things as his dimensional portal for cheap magic tricks, and generally using his prodigious intellect on ray guns and toaster cannons. Is it any wonder his Catch Phrase is "Let me check my notes"?
- Subverted by the fact that his inventions are being applied to better effect (well, slightly better at least) by the evil corporation that employs him.
Doc of The Whiteboard uses a teleporter to get pizzas delivered instantly. He also once invented a device that could launch paintballs backwards through time (presumably by breaking the light barrier).
Played for laughs on this page of The Adventures Of Dr McNinja: "James! The leader of our group. He invented jet boots, and he used them to kick people."
- And then there's Martin, who is basically the Hulk, who uses his ability to...advertise his chain of super-markets. Oh, and do work for the mafia.
Heroically averted in Schlock Mercenary with the Teraport. Originally designed to make money by allowing rich bastards to take their space-yachts between stars without queuing-up to the Wormgate with the rest of the plebs it didn't take long for people to figure-out it made a dandy Superweapon.
- The Wormgates themselves can be considered an evil aversion of this trope as well: after all as long as people are seen going in one place and coming out the other, there's nothing to worry about what goes on in between...right?
- And even before the introduction of the Teraport there was the ubiquitous gravitic technology, if you have true Artificial Gravity on your ship then you already have forcefields, tractor-beams and a reactionless drive as well.
  - ...not to mention the ability to rip other ships apart with a careful application of applied Artificial Gravity.
Tedd of El Goonish Shive uses his ultrapowerful transformation gun to throw a party for his girlfriend and switch genders so that he can cook.
- Considering that Tedd's dad is the head of the local MIB, he can't really sell or distribute the technology without getting grounded for, say, ten thousand years or so.

The titular object in Erika's New Perfume never really does more but take up space in Erika's bedroom after Sarah uses it, despite having at least two of its three demonstrated functions with a definite audience for them and having even more All There In The Manual. This might partially be because the characters themselves don't have the manual, though.
Cracked's 6 Magical Movie Items They Wasted on Bullshit.
Phase is single-handedly wrecking this trope in the Whateley Universe. Only a freshman at Whateley Academy, he's already going around getting inventors to sign up with his financial service and marketing their inventions to fix this problem. Bugs had a weird gadget that faked painting on stuff: Phase saw how to turn it into the best toy ever. Jericho had some stuff that Phase is trying to patent and turn into the best medikit in the world. Loophole had a gadget that helped her get awesome performance out of her self-built car: Phase wants to market it as a way of cranking up automotive fuel efficiency world-wide.
Sailor Nothing author Stephan Gagne's Unreal Estate is set In A World where technology that allows pocket universes to be created to order is ubiquitous. It's mostly used to create a few Worlds of Hats — the most unusual world is the First Person Shooter world that automatically respawns "players" after lethal wounds. The Big Bad reveals that he has a Vision about using the technology to its full potential, and You Cant Make An Omelette...

The premise behind Chaotic is that it can create an identical duplicate you to live out a real world version of a Trading Card Game. You can 'port out' and the duplicate's memories are reabsorbed into you. While the show managed to surprise me by showing a wheelchair bound player walking inside the simulation, they ignored a more obvious application of their technology: Immortality.
- Except you would only be immortal within the world of Chaotic, which would probably get boring eventually. The show has also not been going on long enough for us to know if it has been ignored or not.
Parodied to no end in Invader Zim. The title character once created an orbital satellite station that sucked out all the water from the city, gathered it into a giant balloon, and dropped it for no other reason than to win a water balloon fight.
- Well, Zim might not be making the best use of the technology, but aren't the rest of the Irkens using it to conquer the universe? Seems like some well applied Phlebotinum to me.
- A few other examples:
  - A massive robot obviously capable of obliterating everything in its path is used by Zim to get revenge on Dib for a few off-hand comments made earlier in the episode.
  - Zim tries to get revenge on Dib for throwing a muffin at him. Zim gets Dib trapped—there's no escape, Dib's got a massive laser cannon aimed straight at his head—and what does Zim do? He has the cannon fire another muffin—not even a massive muffin, just a normal muffin roughly equivelent to the one Dib threw at him. And then lets Dib go on his merry way.
  - Zim has a device that can take out human organs and subsitute them with...stuff...and what does he do with it? He uses it to stuff himself full of human organs in case the ~~school~~ skool nurse decides to do an x-ray. Never mind sucking the brains out of the entire human populous, what if Zim needs to see a doctor?
  - Why would he want to suck everyone's brains out? It's not like they could get much dumber anyway.
  - Yeah, but people are dead without brains. What resistance could you possibly face trying to conquer the Earth? Who's going to stop you?
  - Logically, any application of that device would be fatal. Lack of blood vessel attachment means massive internal hemorrhages. The objects have got to be covered in germs, leading to sepsis. Not to mention how Zim was taking people's livers, lungs, intestines, hearts, spleens, etc...things you'll eventually die without unless you're given life support.
  - Perhaps the most bizarre by far—Zim has a device that can submit humans to the most painful mental torture possible, and uses it to hypontize the town's populous into helping him win a ~~school~~ skool fundraiser.
Lampshaded in the episode "Jail Bird" of Darkwing Duck; Negaduck is continually frustrated that Megavolt, Bushroot and the Liquidator are too stupid to make full use of their superpowers. (Although, thanks to a power-stealing emerald, Negaduck ultimately doesn't fare much better.)
- Well, his main problem was that he also gained three new sets of weaknesses and a compulsion to act goofy at inopportune moments in addition to the powers. You have to admit, before he got taken down, he was much more of a threat then Bushroot, Megavolt, and Liquidator ever could have been.
In one of The Simpsons Halloween episodes, Homer buys a teleporter from Prof. Frink and uses it to get food from the fridge without leaving the couch. Marge draws the line at using the teleporter as a shortcut to the toilet.
- Another Halloween episode has Lisa and Bart develop superpowers. Bart vows to uses his powers (stretching) "only to annoy", and procedes to pull a prank on Skinner.
Pretty much every invention ever made by Doctor Doofensmirtz on Phineas & Ferb. In one particular incident, he created a machine that could remove zinc from water as the first stage of a circuitous plot that even he couldn't remember all the details of. Considering that zinc is fairly useful metal, he could have just cornered the world zinc market, made a lot of money, and done so legally at that.

Santa Claus has, amongst other things, access to a vast manufacturing complex run by magical elves, a sack that can hold near limitless contents and still be carried, the power to make reindeer fly and some kind of time dilation ability. Best use in story: making illegal copies of copyrighted/trademarked/patented toys and giving them to children. Better idea: world domination.
- Santa has every and any material possession he wants, a happy and stable marriage, a small army of faithful and happy slaves, no neighbors, a 100% approval rating virtually everywhere on the planet, and 100% job security. And he's also immortal. And he only has to work one day a year.
- So why do rich kids get nicer presents than poor kids? He easily has the power to end poverty in third-world countries, but he's too busy conquering the Martians and turning into Tim Allen, apparently.
  - It's the socio-economic factors.
Any one who actually has psychic powers could make tons of cash at Las Vegas instead of appearing on talk shows. As Jay Leno once said, "Why do you never see the headline 'Psychic Wins Lottery'?" Answer: Because when a psychic wins, he doesn't tell he's psychic. 'Cause, you know, some people might dare accuse him of cheating.
- This is actually Lampshaded in the Nicolas Cage film Next.
- This is also used in the Planet of the Dead Doctor Who, with a psychic woman who repeatedly wins small amounts on the lottery, because she's happy enough with her life as it is and doesn't want the changes a big win would create.
The Computer, a machine capable of performing incredibly complex arithmetic and decision logic, primarily sees use doing a workless infinite loop and managing resources that may one day be used. Even in the case of people who actually use computers for things, most of the time it's the same old boring stuff over and over again. They want to do their accounts, or write a letter, when the machine may be capable of creating sapient or sentient thought, or just comparing your personal data to millions of other people and trying to figure out what kind of beer you'd want.
- And porn. Can't forget the porn.
- Oh, it gets used for the important stuff, too, like doing simulations for engineers and scientists. It's just that they're so cheap nowadays that the Mundane Utility of being able to do silly stuff like editing TV Tropes or playing video games is more visible. On a more relevant note, if you want your own computer to stop being misapplied, go participate in one of the distributed computing projects listed on That Other Wiki.
Any science fiction full-body alteration device. Yes, they do occasionally forget that Reed Richards Is Useless and start marketing it to transsexuals, but fail to recognize that a device capable of making such thorough rearrangements of adult bodies might be engineered for more than appearance - like, say, immortality.
- Everyone's always gotta aim so high. Living forever aside, do consider that no-one need worry about losing limbs or needing organ transplants ever again. Many cancers that weren't brain tumours or enthusiastically metastasizing all over the place wouldn't be a threat either. Not to mention putting plastic surgeons out of a job...

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